Opening
The railway was opened officially by Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) on 4 November 1890. It was opened to the public on 18 December 1890. Initially, it had stations at:
- Stockwell
- The Oval (now Oval)
- Kennington
- Elephant & Castle
- Borough
- King William Street
The original service was operated by trains composed of an engine and three carriages. Thirty-two passengers could be accommodated in each carriage, which had longitudinal bench seating and sliding doors at the ends, leading onto a platform for boarding and alighting. It was reasoned that there was nothing to look at in the tunnels, so the only windows were in a narrow band high up in the carriage sides. Gate-men rode on the carriage platforms to operate the lattice gates and announce the station names to the passengers. Because of their claustrophobic interiors, the carriages soon became known as padded cells. Unlike other railways, the C&SLR had no ticket classes or paper tickets; when the railway began operations, a flat fare of two pence, collected at a turnstile, was charged. Despite the cramped carriages and competition from bus and tram services, the railway attracted 5.1 million passengers in 1891, its first year of operation. To alleviate overcrowding, the fleet of rolling stock was enlarged.
Read more about this topic: City And South London Railway
Famous quotes containing the word opening:
“Fellow citizens, I have been called upon to conduct this opening meeting of the Osage First Methodist-Episcopalian-Presbyterian-Congregational-Baptist-Catholic-Unitarian-Hebrew Church.”
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“The rangey bough anticipated fruit
With snowballs cupped in every opening bud.
The road alone maintained itself in mud....”
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—Richard Blake, and William Cameron Menzies. Narrator, Invaders from Mars, at the opening of the movie (1953)